For more information, contact: Ben Haimowitz, +1-718-398-7642 or +1-917-903-9287, press@aom.org

At a time when women and ethnic minorities outnumber white males
by two to one in the U.S. workplace but remain decidedly
underrepresented in executive ranks, a great puzzle is the growing
body of evidence that nonwhite and female managers are reluctant to
hire and promote members of their own groups. The phenomenon has
lent credence to such terms as "tokens," "queen bees," and "cat
fights" that suggest an underlying fear and dislike among these
executives of their own kind.

Now some new research uncovers a motive considerably more
sympathetic than what those terms convey. A paper to be presented
at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management,(Philadelphia Aug.
1-5) finds that, contrary to the notion that women
and ethnic-minority executives fear fellow group members as
competitive threats, they are more inclined than white males to
seek their advancement. The problem is, their bosses are likely to
hold that against them.

This contributes at least in part, the paper's authors believe,
to what is known as the "glass ceiling."

"Ethnic minority or female leaders who engage in
diversity-valuing behavior are penalized with worse performance
ratings than their equally diversity-valuing white or male
counterparts," concludes the report by David R. Hekman of the
University of Colorado and Maw Der Foo and Wei Yang of the
University of Colorado, Boulder.

"Nonwhite and women leaders who engage in diversity-increasing
behaviors in the highest organizational ranks are systematically
penalized with lower performance ratings for doing so," the study
continues. "Our findings suggest that nonwhite and women leaders
may increase their own chances of advancing up the corporate ladder
by actually engaging in a very low level of diversity-valuing
behavior... By downplaying their race and gender, these leaders may
be viewed...as worthy of being promoted into the highest
organizational echelons."

Adds Prof. Hekman: "More people believe in ghosts than believe
in racism, and people in the upper ranks of management will not
openly utter a bad word against diversity. Yet, executives who are
women or ethnic minorities are penalized every day for doing what
everyone says they ought to be doing -- helping other members of
their groups fulfill their management potential. It is a revealing
sign that the supposed death of longstanding biases has been
greatly exaggerated."

The professor notes that, while the great majority of the
hundreds of managers' bosses in the study were white males, results
did not vary when the bosses were women or ethnic minorities
(although the relatively small numbers sampled may have made it
hard to obtain differences that were statistically significant). He
sees the state of affairs revealed by the research as comparable to
a chronic inflection -- latent much of the time but subject to
pernicious flare-ups.

Bias does its damage, the paper finds, through stereotypes
regarding two personal traits that are widely viewed as
essential social behaviors -- warmth and competence, both of which
strongly influence how managers are rated in terms of overall
performance. "Women tend to be held to higher standards of warmth
than men, and ethnic minorities tend to be held to higher
standards of competence than whites," the authors observe.
"Minority and women leaders' engagement in diversity-valuing
behavior may be viewed as selfishly advancing the social standing
of their own low-status demographic groups."

As a result, women so engaged "will tend to be viewed as less
warm and receive lower performance ratings than their equally
diversity-valuing male leader counterparts." Indeed, they "will be
viewed by their bosses as cold and scheming to subvert the existing
social order."

Meanwhile, ethnic minorities commonly "tend to be stereotyped as
incompetent," a notion conveniently handy for bosses who perceive
as self-serving the efforts of nonwhite managers on behalf of
members of their own ethnic groups.

These findings emerge from an analysis of a trove of background
data collected at a major center for leadership training in
connection with 362 executives who registered for a course there.
The managers were about 14% nonwhite and 31% female; earned an
average of $174,000 a year, and worked for organizations with a
mean of about 4,700 employees, where they typically occupied
positions high in the corporate hierarchy. Included in the data
were assessments by an average of three to four peers regarding the
executives' commitment to diversity and ratings by their bosses
with respect to warmth, competence, and overall performance.

Women and nonwhites alike were rated by their peers as
significantly more valuing of diversity than white males were, but
their efforts only earned them disfavor from their bosses. Thus,
for the entire sample of 362 executives, the majority of whom were
white males, valuing diversity gave a significant boost to ratings
for warmth and performance; in contrast, for women execs
specifically, it was negatively related to ratings for both
variables, and for ethnic minorities it turned bosses' thumbs down
on competence.

In the words of the paper, "diversity-valuing behavior was
negatively related only to evaluations of leaders who were nonwhite
or female -- leaders who are thought to have the greatest potential
to dismantle the glass ceiling. This finding suggests that
minorities and women might be able to advance their own careers by
acting as tokens and engaging in a low level of diversity-valuing
behavior."

Notwithstanding the unfavorable picture of the managers' bosses
that emerges from this analysis, the findings do raise this nagging
question: suppose the low ratings received by the nonwhite and
female diversity-valuing managers reflect bosses' doubts about
these leaders' objectivity in hiring and promoting individuals of
their own gender or race. What if legitimate concern about
personnel judgments, and not simply bias, is the explanation?

To probe this question and other uncertainties, the authors
undertook a behavioral experiment that enabled them to control key
factors, such as the quality of job candidates, in a way that
cannot be done in a field study.

Three hundred ninety-five university students were divided into
four groups, each of which viewed a presentation in which a
supposed HR manager (actually an actor or actress) presented photos
and information about four candidates for a position as project
manager and advocated for one. The four candidates, as well as the
four supposed HR managers, were a white male, a while female, a
nonwhite male, and a nonwhite female. The white male HR manager
advocated for each of the four candidates, each to a different
audience. The white female manager advocated for either the white
male or white female candidate. The nonwhite male manager advocated
for the white male or nonwhite male applicant. The nonwhite female
manager advocated for either the white male or nonwhite female
candidate.

Those advocating for female or minority candidates, following a
set script, conceded that all four applicants were equally
qualified but urged the importance of diversity to the organization
and of doing "the right thing" to advance it. Those advocating for
the white male candidate indicated that while all four applicants
were impressive, this one "looks like a leader and looks like
somebody whom the team will respect...I'm convinced he is the best
person for the job."

How did the audiences respond to the presentations? Like the
bosses in the field study, they penalized (in their answers to a
survey) the minority and female presenters, but not the males, for
seeking to foster diversity. Prof Hekman says that the white
actresses in particular were startled by the intensity of audience
reactions when they advocated for the white female candidate. "The
actresses said they could see the women glaring at them," he
recalls.

What can be done about a problem this enduring? The authors
wonder whether, given the lack of disapproval -- and even
approbation -- that white males experience in fostering managerial
heterogeneity, they might be recruited to play a larger role than
they now do in diversity offices, which today are typically run by
women and minorities. While conceding the approach to be
counterintuitive, they cite the success of the United Parcel
Service, where the white male CEO serves as the leader of the
company's diversity council.

Another approach, they write, "would be to simply measure and
reward the degree to which people hire and promote individuals who
are demographically dissimilar from themselves. Because white men
currently hold a clear numerical majority at the highest
organizational levels, rewarding such demographic unselfishness
would naturally correct the demographic imbalances throughout
organizations as members of demographic majorities would tend to
hire and promote members of demographic minorities."

The paper, entitled "Does valuing diversity result in worse performance ratings for minority and female leaders?" will be
as among some 4,000 research reports to be presented at
the Academy of Management annual
meeting, in Philadelphia from August 1st to 5th. Founded in
1936, the Academy of Management is the largest organization in the
world devoted to management research and teaching. It has about
19,400 members in 118 countries. This year's annual meeting
will draw some 10,000 scholars and practitioners for sessions on a
host of subjects relating to business strategy, organizational
behavior, corporate governance, careers, human resources,
technology development, and other management-related topics.